MEARS USES A GOOD YAWN FOR FAST LAP

INDIANAPOLIS -- There is a calm about Rick Mears that defies his habit of driving 220 mph.

Just watch him in pit lane, he says. And sure enough, there he is, the day he is to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, yawning.

"I don't know why. It's just my body's way of keeping the nerves down, I guess," he says.

Keeping the nerves down is one way Rick Mears keeps the revs up.

When he put his Penske Racing PC-18 Chevrolet on the pole two weeks ago with a 223.885-mph record qualifying run, he became the first driver in 73 years of the race to win the pole five times.

And when the green flag waves for today's noon start (Channels 10 and 25), he'll be trying for a record-tying fourth 500 victory -- in just his 12th start.

A.J. Foyt and Al Unser, the only drivers with four wins, are making their 32nd and 24th starts.

The pace Mears is setting is frantic. But only between yawns.

It's a calm he discovered in a storm.

"The first time I noticed it was when I was little. I was probably about 8 years old," he says. "We got caught in a storm out on the ocean, my mom and dad and I, in about a 16-foot fishing boat.

"I just kind of leaned back in between both of them and went sound to sleep. Water coming over the top of the thing and trying to turn us over and everything else -- and I just went to sleep and got away from it.

"That's my way of getting away from it, I guess."

Wichita-born and Bakersfield-raised -- the perfect backdrop for Mears.

Calm, slow setting. As deceptive as his calm, slow demeanor.

Roger Penske took the boy out of the small town in 1977. They went to Indy together for the first time in 1978.

A little bit of Bakersfield was in the driver's seat when Mears started from the No. 3 spot that year.

"Driving for Roger Penske at this race, and I wasn't nervous, and I was going to stay cool, right?" he says.

Well, he was cool, despite all the talk about the rookie on the front row, the aloud wondering about how he would handle himself.

"I wasn't going to let the pressure get to me, so I stayed back in the hotel room, and I stayed in my garage taking my time getting ready and trying to stay calm and collected, no problem."

No problem until he finally took the green flag and entered Turn One.

"... And my helmet starts lifting off my head -- I'd forgotten to buckle my strap in all my calmness."

He held onto the helmet until an early-race yellow allowed him to pit and buckle up.

A blown engine ruined his race that day, but he hasn't forgotten to buckle his strap since.

And he has continued to learn, growing into the greatest oval driver in the series -- maybe of all time.

He won the pole his second year at Indy and won the race.

Roger Penske got off a plane in Ontario, Calif., one late summer day in 1977. And he got a tip that has paid off for more than a decade.

A USAC official, the late Stan Worley, told Penske to keep his eye on a good, young driver who would be in the Indy-car at Ontario Motor Speedway -- -- Mears.

"You know, a lot of times people say that, but I watched him unconsciously," Penske says. "He finished that race and had done well during the season ..."

And was approached by Penske not long after.

Penske was looking for a backup driver for Mario Andretti, who was running some Formula One races at the time.

"I wanted to have a driver who had been a winner in some type of racing, (who) had the ability to understand the technical side of the car, and (who) had the personality to work well with the team and with the sponsors," Penske says.

"He had some miles under his belt. He wasn't just somebody I pulled off the shelf," Penske says.

His impact with the team was immediate.

"When he first tested, right away he was quick and caught some eyes," Penske says. "In Phoenix, he got into a car that really wasn't fitted for him, and he was competitive right away.

"He really came out of the box with a lot of great potential."

And he's still realizing it.

He has won three Indy-car titles for Penske (1979, '81, '82). He has 18 victories in the '80s -- only Mario Andretti and Bobby Rahal have as many.

And at Indy, nobody has had as much success in as short a time. In 11 Indys, he has finished in the top three six times (top five, seven times). In qualifying for 12 Indys, he has put his car on the front row nine times.

Much of the credit for that success belongs to Penske for the program he runs and the quality of car he provides.

But other teams are successful. And other drivers have similar equipment.

"I'd say he's probably in the top 2 percent of his class for having a feel for his race car -- if not the best in the world," Mears' chief mechanic Richard Buck says. "He has an uncanny memory, if not a photographic memory, of a run. He'll go maybe three or five laps of a run and come back and give us a detailed account. He replays it back to us.

"His driving ability, his ability to maintain a line -- uncanny," Buck says. "Like us walking."

Mears is noted for his awareness of the smallest problems with his car -- the slightest oversteer or understeer -- and for his ability to communicate with the crew members how to fix the problem with the fewest adjustments.

"Since I'm the one sitting in the car, I'm really the only one who knows how much of a push it has or how loose it is, or whatever," Mears says. "So I've got to try to determine how much of a change I need.

"It would be very easy ... to say, 'The car is pushing, fix it.' And see what happens. The guys would make a change in the pits and then we'd go back out and try it, and it would be better or it would be too much.

"If I can guess a little bit closer at that by how much I'm feeling, then we can do it in less stops and get competitive quicker, earlier in the race."

That ability takes concentration. It's his concentration level that might be the biggest reason Mears is one of only two drivers, with at least 10 years experience, in this year's field who has never been involved in an accident or spin during the Indy 500. Pancho Carter is the other.

"It's due to fear. I don't like pain at all," Mears, who sustained serious foot and leg injuries in a wreck at Sanair Super Speedway in Montreal in 1984.

"People laugh when I say I don't like gambling, I don't like taking chances ... I always try to keep this as much of a calculated risk as possible. And if I've got to step into the unknown, I take very small steps and sneak up on it. That way you find the edge before you step over it -- where, if you take large steps, it's easier to overstep the boundary line, and then you're in trouble."

Mears has certainly not snuck up on Indy. He has attacked it for all he could get out of it, and it's still giving.

It has become important enough to him that he would rather win the Indy 500 again than another series championship.

"Because it puts you in another category -- to be there with A.J. Foyt and with Al with four wins would just be tremendous for me," he says.

"And it wouldn't necessarily be only because of tying with those guys. Everyone we've had so far has been better than the one before, so all I can imagine is that it would be just better again."

Something he can dream about just before waking, stretching, yawning, and then doing it.

FROM THE TOP

How Indianapolis 500 pole winners have fared in the race during the 1980s:

Year Driver Pole speed Finish

1988 Rick Mears 219.198 First

1987 Mario Andretti 215.370 Ninth

1986 Rick Mears 216.878 Third

1985 Pancho Carter 212.583 33rd

1984 Tom Sneva 210.029 16th

1983 Teo Fabi 207.395 26th

1982 Rick Mears 207.004 Second

1981 Bobby Unser 200.546 First

1980 Johnny Rutherford 192.256 First

INDY 500

-- TIME: Noon.

-- TV: Channels 10 and 25 (Prerace show 11 a.m.).

-- WEATHER: Increasing clouds with highs forecasted to be 75-80.

-- POLE POSITION: Rick Mears who qualified his 1989 PC-18 Chevolet at a record four-lap average of 223.885.

-- DEFENDING CHAMPION: Mears (144.809 average).

-- OLDEST IN RACE: A.J. Foyt, 54 years, 4 months.

-- FIELD AVERAGE SPEED: 216.588 mph, a record; previous record 210.280 ('86).